New Live Video, Report from Trip, More Response to Yusuf Ismail

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And welcome to the Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon.

It's always funny the stuff that pops up right as the program is starting. This was retweeted by Gary Sinise, interestingly enough, from General Electric.

And I just find this stuff fascinating. 11 .7 billion miles from home, the GE -powered

Voyager 1 is the first spacecraft to leave the solar system. And so Voyager 1 has left the building and we all know what happens to Voyager 1.

It becomes Veejer and it becomes a big old honking thing and yeah, it's great,

Veejer. It's wonderful. Anyway, some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. It's okay. You don't have to know.

But it demonstrates that you're not really a true geek or a trekkie if you don't know who or what

Veejer is. But anyhow, I thought that was rather interesting. Welcome to the program. First and foremost, many thanks to all the people who made the past week or so possible.

I left a little over a week ago to head to Atlanta. On Saturday evening,

I visited with the freakishly tall Todd Friel and we recorded an episode of Wretched TV on, basically

I just did my New Testament Reliability presentation that many of you have seen in various and sundry places.

And so, I don't know what's going on here. Wow. We are having lots of problems, aren't we?

Not really? The video stream's great, but our normal audio stream is now dead.

Why? Well, it sort of... Conflicts with the other thing? It wanted the sound card for itself.

So, what about all the people who are used to listening to the audio? They're getting directed to the video right now.

That's not good. That's not good. We gotta find a way to fix that. Well, I'll work on it. This is very new.

Because there's people in other lands, you know? This is very new. There's people in Ukraine who are not going to be able to watch the video.

Right now, we have our normal amount of viewers that would normally be listening already.

How about that? Okay. All right. So, there. Okay. Well, I'd put something up on the blog immediately, a post haste, like right now, directing folks to that.

And we need to tweet something so I can retweet it. So, I'm not sure what cave you've been living in, but it's been all over Twitter all day, to your account.

It's been on your blog. That doesn't matter. That does not matter. That does not matter. We need something on Twitter that I can retweet so that folks who normally would be listening are going, where'd he go?

I'm on it. Okay. I'm on it. Let's do that one right now so I can retweet that one. Okay.

Well, we've got things going on, you know? And that's just the way that it happens.

So, hopefully we're still recording and stuff and we'll be able to put it in iTunes and not leave those of you who are iPod listeners completely out in the cold here, because that's how

I listen to so much stuff, too. Most people cannot listen live simply because we keep moving it all over the place to fit my schedule.

So, anyways, I wanted to get back to the story there. We did the program with Todd Friel.

I do want to apologize for having not noticed the sewer roach on the wall behind me.

Evidently, for the last 45 minutes or so of the program, there was a very large sewer roach running about on the wall behind me, distracting some of the people down front.

I was not looking behind me, and so I did not notice it. And one of the most hilarious things,

I do hope someday there will be an outtake video of this, because it does exist somewhere, was when the freakishly tall

Todd Friel attempted to kill the roach. It ended up behind his functional hand cleanser dispenser on the wall.

And then he got it onto the ground, and then we have a wonderful video of Todd Friel dancing in the spirit as he attempts to kill the sewer roach.

And eventually, over toward his desk, you hear a sickening crunch, and the sewer roach and its guts were left on the floor for the rest of the presentation.

It was an interesting experience, let's just put it that way. And so we're looking forward to them making available the new test and reliability presentation and the questions that we had and stuff like that.

It went real well. Then I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting the new church where my son -in -law and daughter go, and my wonderful granddaughter

Clementine. And when Clementine showed up, I just grabbed her and started walking around the church, and I discovered that she is the most popular baby in the world.

Nobody cared about me, but everyone's going, hi, Clementine, hi, Clementine, because she is so stinking cute.

And so when the time came for me to go up front to speak, I just took her with me.

And I went up front holding Clementine, and that actually makes me look like I have a heart.

Everybody knows I don't. Anyone who has read anything about me on the internet knows that I'm a completely heartless automaton that just rips people to shreds right, left, and center just for the fun of it.

That's me. So it's a complete ruse that I would walk around carrying my granddaughter with me, but I did.

And she smiled at everybody, and that was cool. And so anyway,

I then gave her to Summer, and Summer took her back to the nursery, and I did my presentation on Islam, pretty much the same presentation that I did last evening at First Baptist Church in Lindale on Wednesday night.

I had a really good crowd there. But what most of you are probably wondering about is, yeah, there is a dwarf in the background.

We're going to have to think about what's in the background now with video. I hadn't really thought about that. And that was, what was the story there?

Barry and Katie gave that to me. It's reading a book, as I recall. I don't remember what the whole story was about that.

But and then there's a picture of me, and notice that it's me and my wife, and I'm in my kilt. That's my

Buchanan clan kilt. The microphone, I'm going to have to move the microphone to cover the dwarf?

Is that what you're saying? It's in the way of the picture? Oh, okay. There we go. Now you can see.

Okay, good. Well, that's not going to really do any good. Anyways, we'll just have to move stuff around back there. Maybe I'll just start putting different stuff back there to subliminally, yeah, subliminally, there you go, communicate something.

Can you see the thing next to the dwarf? Can't really make it out?

Oh, that's one of my really cool flashy thingies. Here, here. Not everybody can watch.

Can you see that? Oh, cool. All right. It's one of my little lightning Doohickey Whopper thingies.

And I'll have to have that on in the future. That's really cool. It's got mirrors on it and stuff.

There's only actually one thing, but then it's got mirror things on it. And anyhow, what was

I talking about? Oh, yeah. Most of you are probably wondering, this is going to be a real distraction, a real distraction and there's no two ways about it.

They don't have classes on how to handle one of those things when you're, I do need to get a lava lamp.

Yeah. We need to get a lava lamp now. I need to get one of my lava lamps in here. We should have a contest.

Someone should, someone, I need, you know, my orange one doesn't work anymore.

I need to get a new orange lava lamp. That's what I need to do. Because a blue thing and an orange thing, that'd be perfect back there. So I'll have to get a lava lamp back there.

It'll make me feel better. Anyhow, actually, the reality is that is a, that is a mock -up shelf that was never finished.

I mean, it's held together with these little tacks and we just stuck it in here because we didn't have any place else to stick it because we never figured we'd have that.

And it just sort of sits there. And so anyhow, what was

I talking about? Oh, yeah. Get, get down to something serious here. Obviously, the primary reason that I went back there, other than to see my beautiful granddaughter

Clementine, was to go by, not the

Dallas area. I discovered Lindale is not anywhere near Dallas. It's a long ways away. Hour and a half drive.

As I found out this morning, because my flight was at 8 .15. And so anyway, yeah,

I'll put a couple lava lamps on the ministry resource list so we can put in the background, see if anyone buys them for us.

And the reason that I was, I want to do all of this is after the explosion of tweets from Ergon Kanner a few months ago, claiming to be exonerated, innocent, pure as driven snow, etc, etc.

And which, of course, contained all sorts of nasty attacks upon yours, truly. It's funny, my critics never mentioned just how nasty

Kanner can be in attacking people who disagree with him and have exposed him. Anyway, I had contacted

Pastor Tom Buck, because I knew he was in that area, general area. And I basically asked him to find a place in Dallas where we could do this presentation.

Well, we've sort of theorized since then that the reason we couldn't find a place is there wasn't anybody in Dallas who wanted to touch this 10 -foot pole.

And now we now we know why that took place.

I cannot go into details right now. I don't know if I'll ever have the freedom to go completely into all the details here.

But let's just say that certain folks showed themselves to be willing to do almost anything to try to stop us.

There was great panic in the Kanner camp as the day drew near, as they realized that we were going to be...

You know, up until this point, the information against Kanner has been on this website over here and that website over there and a few videos over here and a few videos over there.

But to put it all in one place and bring all the strings together and say, here is what

Ergen Kanner said. I mean, the primary witness against Ergen Kanner is

Ergen Kanner. And though they have done their best to diminish the number of sermons that we can cite that are still on the web, almost all that stuff has already been saved to hard drives and backup systems all over the place.

And I put together about a almost two hour presentation that brought all this together, was focused upon the primary issues.

There are a lot of things I could have brought up. I didn't mention, for example, the fact that Kanner can't seem to pronounce the word psalm.

He says swam all the time, you know, little things like that that, you know,

I left out partly because of time and partly because a lot of people will just pick on the little things rather than looking at the big picture.

And the big picture was Ergen Kanner made up a persona. And the persona was based upon untruth.

That's just that's just all there is to it. That fact is clear, it's indisputable. If that was a disputable fact,

Ergen Kanner would be disputing it with facts and evidence and he cannot and will not do so.

He cannot face me. He could have showed up. If I'm so far off in the woods, I'm so wrong.

He could have shown up. He could have. We would have given him time. We would have dialogued. But the fact of the matter is he will not answer these questions because he cannot answer these questions.

The sad thing is to see how many of his followers, even to this day, will not even examine the case against him.

Ah, it's all been answered before. I just, you know, Ergen's a wonderful guy. They will not. It is the same type of attitude we see amongst

Mormons and Muslims and other cultists, to be perfectly honest with you. Because they just don't want to look at the truth, they don't want to think, they don't want to be challenged, they don't want to have to consider the distant possibility.

That, in fact, they have been deceived by this man, that he's not what he has claimed to be.

And so I want to put out there not only my thanks to Tom Buck, who kept the course, and to the church in allowing us to do this, and the folks that made the live streaming possible, because we had lots of people watching live stream, and even the first 24 hours, like 2 ,700 people had watched the presentation.

So with the live stream number and that, that's over 3 ,000 people in the first day, had seen the evidence against Ergen Kanner.

That's pretty impressive. And hopefully that will get the word out even more to, you know, now people will have a resource they can direct people to when they see that Ergen Kanner has been invited to address the youth at such -and -such a place.

Now you can say, Pastor X of such -and -such church, have you seen this?

Could you please, please, for the sake of your people, the sake of your being a shepherd of the sheep, could you please listen to this and get back to me as to why you would allow a man like this who is unrepentant about these activities and these lies that he's told, why you're, you know, involving yourself in this way?

And we've gotten a lot of positive stuff. I didn't see the letter that you mentioned to me, you didn't send it to me, but someone sent in a letter that basically said, you know, up until now

I always got upset with you when you started talking about Ergen Kanner and that was a waste of time until I watched the presentation.

And now I realize why you've done what you've done and why it's necessary for you to do what you've done.

And that's really, really important to me. We were able, I spent a lot of time putting that together, that presentation together.

I wanted it to be clear, to be orderly, and I wanted it to communicate the central issues primarily, and I think it accomplished all of that.

And I'm very thankful for that. We obviously are going to be, once we get the local video from First Baptist Church Lindale, we're going to be dropping, because what we did for the live feed was they had a camera shooting one of the digital projectors, the screens, and the projectors weren't all that powerful.

And so the video quality is rather poor. Yeah, I was a bit concerned when

I first saw it, but you know, the point came across. Well, as long as you can hear the audio, then you can be able to make out what's going on in the video.

I mean, you can clearly tell that's Ergen Kanner. But we're still going to throw, Paul, drop videos in. We're going to, I'm told they're going to get us

HD video of it. And then we've got the keynote presentation. We'll drop it all in and make it a real pro presentation and then we will then put it up on YouTube.

Right, right. So we will have a resource that everyone can be pointed to. And that is what

Ergen Kanner and Arlington Baptist College wanted to avoid. They want us to cancel this thing, and they communicated that very clearly.

And I can't talk much more about that right now, but I'll just tell you that Ergen Kanner is already suing one

Christian pastor. Very clearly, there are certain passages of Scripture that he doesn't think are relevant whatsoever and that he will violate with, he thinks, impunity.

So I'll just give you an idea of some of the stuff that's going on in the background in that particular situation, and maybe we'll be able to tell you more about it in the future.

But the fact of the matter is we had some real opposition to get over and we did it. We stayed the course.

We had to. There just wasn't anything we could do about it. And so that material is available. So my sincere thanks to Pastor Buck and the folks at FBC -Lyndale, and we will see what the aftermath of this is going to be.

My hope and prayer is that so much godly pressure will be brought against the

Kanners that they will finally have to come out, repudiate the excuse sheet that is posted on Norman Geisler's website, that that will finally be removed with apologies to the body of Christ for having inflicted it upon everyone, and that there will be open acknowledgement of the facts concerning Ergin Kanner's history, that he was wrong to claim to speak

Arabic. He was wrong to claim to have been born in Istanbul and raised in Turkey, and that all those sermons he delivered saying,

I came here as I was about to go into university, actually came here before he was three,

I came here having always lived in majority Muslim countries, and my father was a polygamist and was practicing the

Abraham lie, and I had no idea about what

Christians believed, and I thought you hated me and I hated you. How many Christian teachers did

Ergin Kanner have in the Ohio school system? He was surrounded by Christians.

He knew all about Christians. It was the Midwest, for crying out loud, in the early 1970s.

That was back when you could still have Christmas programs, you know, without the Freedom from Religion Foundation jumping down your throat.

Don't give this I thought you hated me stuff. It's a bunch of baloney, and he knows it.

It was all a persona. It was all meant to allow him to make this emotional appeal, and sadly there's some people go, well, you know, that's good enough for me as long as it was all for Jesus.

Anyway, we demonstrated the point without any question. We demonstrated the reality without any question, but many people have complimented us.

It wasn't a bunch of ad hominem. There wasn't any mockery. It was very, very straightforward. The case is clear.

The case is well documented, and of course, Ergin Kanner could never stand in my presence and defend himself against that information.

But here is what I want to offer. I am offering right now to Ergin Kanner and Arlington Baptist College.

I will come to Arlington Baptist College. I will make my presentation, and then

I will allow Ergin Kanner to respond, and then we can have an hour of cross -examination.

Him asking me questions, I asking him questions. I will come to your campus to do that.

Will Ergin Kanner do it? We all know the answer to that. We all know the answer to that, but the challenge and invitation is there.

I know why I have done this, and I know that I've done it with integrity and with honesty.

How about you, Ergin? You know in your heart that I've done so as well. So be happy to come and do that.

Ain't going to happen, but the offer is there. And anyone who has contact with the folks, if you know anyone who goes to Arlington Baptist College, point them to that information.

They may not be able to watch it on campus. They may have been told to avoid it. In fact, we were told that on Friday of last week, they had a pep rally.

Yes, they did. They had a pep rally in support of Ergin Kanner. Well, that's how you deal with accusations of problems of integrity.

Yeah, have a pep rally. There you go. Wow. Absolutely amazing.

Absolutely amazing. So we'll be working on that video and getting it up and making it available to you.

A couple things I want to get to before we get back to responding to Yusuf Ismail, because the time is very short.

I leave. Let's see. Today is the 12th.

So I leave in 16 days. Yes, 16 days from now. I'll be flying to London.

And then on the 30th of September, in fact,

I need to mention this. I seriously am asking you for your prayers.

In fact, if there are some of you who, for example, your church has a prayer list, you have some intercessory groups, whatever it might be.

I am looking at the schedule that has been lined out for me. And folks, for seven days,

I am talking and debating morning, noon, and night.

It is without a doubt the most outlandish schedule that has ever been presented to me.

I have now six debates. Two with Shabir Ali, two with Yusuf Ismail, one with Bashir Vanya, and one with a gentleman that I know next to nothing about, other than he has been highly insistent that he must debate me,

Yusuf Buxin. There is no way on God's green earth that between now and the 28th,

I can do the kind of preparation I want to be able to do for six debates, plus two unbelievable radio broadcasts on completely different topics on Monday the 30th.

I mean, if Ergin Kanter can include a discussion with a Muslim cabbie as a debate, that makes eight debates that I will have that are actual debates.

I don't include the unbelievable stuff in my debate list, but they're fairly broadly listened to programs, and maybe

I should just start throwing them in, because they are very similar to formal debates. But the number of lectures

I'm giving, the range of topics, I am not sufficient for this.

I am not sufficient for this. I'm starting to wonder, honestly, if maybe this is why the

Lord has just allowed me over the past two months to be incredibly disciplined.

I am right now in the best physical shape of my life. I mean, Rich will tell you, I am so lean right now, it's unbelievable.

I'm riding huge miles and enjoying it. I'm in really good shape. I'm in really good physical shape, and I'm wondering right now if that's why.

I mean, I can run on a pretty small amount of input right now, and a small amount of sleep, because I've been pushing myself so hard to get to that point, and now

I'm starting to wonder if maybe I know why. Because between the 2nd of October and the 9th of October, that seven -day window, aside from traveling 22 ,000 miles in the air,

I am going to be taking on a schedule that I have never attempted anything even—I don't think

I've ever attempted half this amount of material in the same period of time, not in my entire life. I guess

I'm just celebrating turning 50 in a big way. So what I am asking you to do is to, if your church prays for folks, to please pray for those debates and pray for those lectures.

Many of them are going to have to be off the top of my head, in the sense of drawing from 30 years worth of ministry now to—not the debates, but a lot of the lectures.

They are on topics of—I mean, it's—okay, discussing homosexuality in the church. You know, it wasn't that long ago

I debated Justin Lee and things like that. Obviously, I can do those things without too much preparation.

But obviously, just the amount of time I'm going to be speaking, one of the biggest—obviously, the biggest prayer request is,

I need to be healthy during all this. I really, really need to be healthy during all this and need to protect my voice.

There's just no two ways about it. Or I'm going to sound like Mike Licona did in that one debate with Bart Ehrman, if you remember that.

It was one of the most painful debates to ever listen to. When somebody's talking like this at the end, it's just really very, very, very hard to follow that particular thing.

So that's what's coming up. And so your prayers, your support, extremely, extremely helpful.

Okay, this is a little weird, okay? Because now I got this thing. I got the eye, the eye of Sauron over here.

That's what I'm calling it, the eye of Sauron. There it is. It's actually a blue eye, but it does look a little bit like the eye of Sauron.

And then I've got the channel over there. See, the channel's over here. So when you see me looking down here, this is where the video camera is showing my car because people like breaking into it and breaking windows and doing other things like that.

So if you ever see me jump up and run out, it's because someone's going after my car. But over here is the chat channel.

And up here normally is where I have my, well, right now I have Pocket. It used to be, what was that called?

Read Me Later or something like that. There I have the next story I'm going to be looking at. But over here is Twitter. And here is the chat channel.

And somebody in the channel said, I always imagined Doc standing up and running around while doing the dividing line.

Why did you imagine that is what I want to know. You're a little strange.

Just thought I'd mention that if that's what you thought I was doing. Anyways, now I can look at you people and go, you're weird.

That's sort of cool. That is that's sort of a nice thing to be able to say. Oh, great. Yeah, what do you do?

Focus in on my eye when I do that or something like that? Don't do that. No, that's no. I need to put some rules up for this.

OK. In fact, I want a button in here where I can blank it out. OK. I want, just like I have the cough, you know, cough buttons, turn my my feet on and off.

The cough buttons right here, by the way. When you see me reach for that, I need to cough. I need

I need the Sauron off button. That's that's what I need right there. We'll call it the the ring button or something like that.

So anyhow. Oh, what were we talking about? Oh, yes.

OK. I do. I wish I had the entire letter in English, but I don't.

Everyone's talking today about the pope speaking like an inclusivist.

And it certainly sounded like it. I mean, he said the question for those who do not believe in God is to follow their own conscience.

Sin, even for a nonbeliever, is when one goes against one's conscience. By the way, that's not a definition of sin.

That's sin is when one goes against God's will, God's law.

And while the conscience may point to that, sometimes the conscience becomes seared.

And so anyways, to listen and to follow your conscience means that you understand the difference between good and evil.

My conscience doesn't define good and evil. God's law defines good and evil. I mean, here we're having to deal with this guy.

They talked about the mercy of God has no limits. And in one of the articles, this is from The Independent, in comments likely to enhance his progressive reputation,

Pope Francis has written a long open letter to the founder of La Repubblica newspaper, Eugenio Scalfari, stating that nonbelievers would be forgiven by God if they follow their consciences.

Responding to a list of questions published in the paper by Mr. Scalfari, who is not a Roman Catholic, Francis wrote, You ask me if the

God of the Christians forgives those who don't believe and who don't seek the faith. I start by saying, and this is the fundamental thing, that God's mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart.

The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience. Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.

Uh, I tried to find a full English translation of the letter, and I have not been able to find it.

And so I would like to read it in context, because as I would hope no one would trust

Fox News or The Independent or almost any other media source to quote me correctly, and would go to what

I actually said. Uh, in the same way, I would like to see these comments in a context.

But at the same time, I'm not sure how many times I've said it, but I've said for a very long time that in my opinion, um, the majority of Roman Catholic, of the

Roman Catholic priesthood, bishops, priests, cardinals, whatever. If you put all of them together in a room and were to survey them, uh, you would discover that the majority of them are minimally inclusivistic, and many of them are universalistic.

And it's been that way for a long time. The problem is, and this was, this goes, you know, we talked about this with John Paul, uh,

Ratzinger was a little more concise and accurate in his terminology. But, you know, one year

John Paul will throw out a bone to the conservatives, and he'll say something really conservative. And the next year he throws out a bone to the liberals, and he's trying to hold this big, massive movement together that really is not unified.

And so you gotta throw stuff out both directions to keep people happy and try to keep the middle in one piece.

And you listen to what was just said here by the Pope, and, simple question, simple question.

If you had the kind of platform he has, and you wanted to answer these questions, just compare the lack of specificity, the lack of clarity, the political correctness of what the

Pope has said, with the clarity, force, and biblical nature of John MacArthur answering the same question on Larry King.

Just compare them. I mean, when Johnny Mac gets asked that question, as he gets asked that question all the time, when he gets asked that question, is he stuck with this level of jibber -jabber?

Or does he give an answer? And the funny thing is, I just thought of this, the funny thing is,

John MacArthur answers these questions in the words of the Apostles of Jesus Christ.

And here a man who claims to be the head of the Apostolic See cannot answer in the words of the

Apostles of Jesus Christ. That's a shame.

But it's the reality. And it flows from the fact that, of course, the Pope has not just a deficient understanding of the

Gospel, he has a false understanding of the Gospel. And few there be today who will say that, and who at the same time have done enough reading in Roman Catholic dogmatic theology to know what the

Roman Catholic Gospel is. There are a lot of people who are anti -Catholic in their outlook, but they are so out of prejudice and tradition, not out of conviction that the

Roman Gospel is false because it fundamentally compromises what is really true, and that is the

Biblical Gospel. And so I hope,

I would imagine over the next couple of days, maybe even the next couple of hours, the full text of this letter, which seems to be fairly lengthy, will appear in English, and then we'll have a little bit more of a context to look at.

And I will try to follow that up. I will try to follow that up. I think that'll be helpful. Now, another thing.

We simply must confess, we have to admit, that in Western cultures today, and I speak of the

United Kingdom, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, the

EU in general, the United States, Canada, Australia, if we live in those cultures and we believe that the

Lordship of Jesus Christ should inform every aspect of our lives, we are not like those who simply put the

Lordship of Christ into one little corner. That's our religious life, and then we have our secular life over here.

If we recognize the Lordship of Christ has to be over the entirety of life, we are now second -class citizens.

We are second -class citizens. There is a hierarchy in our society now, and there are people who have more rights.

There are people who can, in essence, have us jailed at the drop of a hat, and they have the right to do it, and they've been given the power to do it by our culture.

Two illustrations of this from very recently. From September 10th,

Fox Sports fires analyst Craig James for past comments on homosexuality. What did he say?

Actually, he was moderating a debate, and he, after comments by the people in the debate said, quote,

I think right now in this country, our moral fiber is sliding down a slope that is going to be hard to stop if we don't stand up with leaders who don't go ride in gay parades.

I can assure you I will never ride in a gay parade, and I hear what you're saying, Tom, but leaders are kids out there.

People need to see examples. There you go. You are not worthy to appear in the holy realm of television.

If you have ever said that, not if you even still believe it, if you have ever said it, remember the

San Antonio thing? They passed it, but they took some of the language out. It's still really bad, but it's not as bad as it would have been.

Remember the San Antonio legislation would have allowed, would have forbade the city of San Antonio from doing business with anyone who had ever expressed what is defined as a prejudicial attitude about homosexuality.

So if you 20 years ago preached a sermon on the subject of homosexuality and gave a biblical perspective of it, you are out.

You cannot be a part of our culture anymore to the fringes with you. That's exactly what they wanted.

These people do not believe in free speech. They do not believe in freedom. They do not believe in liberty. They want your freedom and liberty taken away unless you do what?

You rejoice in their perversion. You must call me good.

You must bow before me and kiss my ring. I am superior to you and our society has said, okay, okay, we'll do that.

We'll do that. That's all right with us. Some of you may recall that I have twice now had the wonderful opportunity to be a of going out to Leicester Square in London.

Both times I went out with a young man who preaches on the streets of London and elsewhere.

I don't necessarily like the phrase street preacher because this young man is more than just a street preacher.

He's involved in the church. He's well -rounded. He's got theological grounding to him.

He's named Robbie Hughes. He's been to most of the debates

I've done there in London and he's a good man. When I've gone out with Brother Hughes, both times to Leicester Square, what has happened is we've had him.

He gets up. He's got the voice and he starts preaching. Immediately, the

Muslims start to become attracted. We told everybody in the group because what you do is you have the group stand around and when people start stopping and listening, then they engage in conversation.

The plan was that when Muslims arrive, that they would bring them over to me and that would allow

Robbie to continue preaching to the non -Muslims while I witnessed to the

Muslims. We've done that twice in Leicester Square in the times that I've been there.

Well, about two weeks ago, I think it was two weeks ago today actually, here's from ChristianNews .net,

article by Heather Clark. I'll just read it. A Christian street preacher was arrested and jailed last week in England after he was accused by a lesbian bystander of engaging in hate speech against homosexuals.

The incident occurred on Thursday while Evangelist Rob Hughes was preaching on the streets of Basildon, Essex. As he spoke,

Hughes was approached by police who advised they had received a complaint that Hughes had engaged in hate speech by preaching against homosexuality.

Police advised that such speech was a violation of the Public Order Act, Section 5, which bans, quote, threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior or disorderly behavior, end quote, or display of, quote, any writing, sign or other visible representation that is threatening, abusive or insulting, end quote, within earshot of sight of a person, quote, likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby, end quote.

Remember, this was the basis upon which a Christian, what was it, a bagel shop or something like that, that had one of those, you know, those running text things and they had the

Bible, this had the Bible running. And since it ran through Leviticus, the police showed up. So, in other words, in the

UK, you cannot publicly read certain portions of the Bible any longer. In fact,

I would say a large portion of the Bible, when you think about it, because there would be lots of folks that would find the Bible's condemnation of evil to fall under this absurd law.

I continue, as Hughes was interviewed by police on the street, his friend Andrew Noble was also interrogated by officers.

Quote, did you say that homosexuality is sinful, end quote. Noble remembers the police inquiring, quote,

I don't think we said that today, but it is something we would say, end quote, he replied. Noble told Christian News Network that a lesbian bystander had lodged a complaint against Hughes' speech and falsely accused him of speaking against homosexual behavior.

Hughes was arrested on the street and transported to the local jail, where he was then fingerprinted and held in a cell. In the meantime,

Noble contacted the Christian legal organization, Christian Concern, to request emergency assistance. Seven hours later, at nearly midnight,

Hughes was released and the charges were dismissed. Hughes told Christian Concern that Christian street preachers are facing a situation where they are now becoming, quote, presumed guilty until found to be innocent, end quote.

Quote, this is happening alarmingly often now. Andrea Williams, president of the organization, stated in a news release announcing

Hughes' arrest, Rob's experience shows why it's so important that we at Christian Legal Center keep giving legal support to Christians like him who simply want to share the good news of Jesus.

As previously reported, a similar incident occurred in July of this year as American evangelist Tony Maiano was arrested and jailed for after speaking against sexual immorality on the streets of London.

Maiano states that he was preaching for First Thessalonians 4, 1 through 12, when a woman became agitated by his message and began to curse.

I preached about the fact that people are in sin and are violating God's word and his law by engaging in immorality, both heterosexual immorality and homosexual immorality, he explained.

Since he had included homosexuality in his sermon, the woman who had gone into a nearby store and came out to find Maiano still speaking called the police to complain.

Moments later, officers arrived, notified Maiano that he had allegedly violated Section 5 of the Public Order Act. He was placed under arrest and marched down to the police station where he was then questioned about his beliefs.

It was surreal because I was interrogated about my faith in Jesus Christ, Maiano said. I was asked if I believe that homosexuality is a sin.

I was asked what portion of the Bible I was reading. I was asked if a homosexual was hungry and walked up to me. Would I give him something to eat?

Like Hughes, Maiano was released near midnight and went back out on the streets to preach the following day.

As we've said many times, the process is the punishment. What we have here, folks, has anyone else noticed how absolutely childish homosexuals are?

They're childish. Who runs off to the police because someone's, he says,

I'm going to hurt my feelings. Mommy! Isn't that exactly what they're doing?

They know they can get away with it. They could stand there and they could curse a blue streak using words

I would have to look up on Google to even figure out what they meant. They could say anything vile, sexual, just go and listen to the conversations in a gay pride march and you'll see what

I mean. And no one will bat an eye. But if you stand upon the street and read from the script, he offended me.

Homosexuality is narcissistic. It's narcissistic. And narcissists tend to be very childlike, very childish, no maturity, no adulthood.

You see, in adulthood, you find out that you don't get everything in life that you just want. There are certain right and wrong things and you learn to change your dreams to fit your reality.

And evidently they don't get that. And so if someone walks by and I don't like what you're saying,

I'm gonna have you arrested. Well, you know what? They can do that now. It'll never happen to them.

They can say anything they want and the police won't touch them. And you know it and I know it.

It is hypocrisy. It's a double standard, but it's the reality we face. It's the reality we face. It's coming.

It's here in the States. This kind of thing could happen right here in the States. I mean, you saw what happened.

What was it? Two and a half, three months ago. Some Christians standing at a gay pride march.

They've just got signs not saying anything. They're attacked. They're beaten. Their signs are torn up. Cops, where are they?

No, no. They're afraid. The police are afraid to do anything because they know that political correctness is the law of the land now.

We are second -class citizens. I don't know how long it has been that I have been telling you.

It's been decades. We can prove it. Just go back on the, at least go back on the

Wayback Machine. We can go back to at least 1998 and I'll bet somewhere in the Wayback episodes of 1998,

I will say something along the lines of homosexuals do not want equal rights.

Homosexuals want Uber rights. You do not have the right to disagree with me.

You do not have the right to express an opinion other than my own. In this area, I rule supreme.

Bow before me and kiss my ring. And it's amazing how many people in Western culture go, okay, okay, whatever you say, just don't get mad at me.

Amazing. Amazing. If that isn't the judgment of God, I don't know what is. I don't know what is.

I really, really don't. It is amazing stuff. Okay, well, as I mentioned, we are coming up very quickly on the debates.

And I think, I'm not sure, I think my debates with Shabir are going to be the last ones

I do. That's, that's not, in one way that's neat, because I'm, I am pretty certain, my,

I really, my gut feeling honestly is that these are going to be very substantive but non -aggressive discussions between Shabir and I.

Um, I really am hoping that the interactions that he and I have had in other contexts, and hopefully get to more, have more there, will allow us to really be focused upon the real issues.

I mean, we're supposed to be talking about what we're writing our book about, the Trinity and Tawhid. And I hope it's not just the standard, you can't believe the

Trinity because you can't trust the New Testament stuff. Hopefully it will be the much more substantive discussion of the positive

Islamic belief in Tawhid. Why does that demand Unitarianism? How can

God exist eternally in a Unitarian mode versus the

Trinity and our belief of the love that existed within the

Godhead even before creation? And you know, that kind of stuff. I'm really hoping that that's where it's going to be able to go.

But I have to admit that what might preclude that is what the

Muslims are expecting. A lot of the Muslims don't want a discussion like that. Some do.

I acknowledge that. I'm glad that there are those that would like to hear that kind of thing, rather than the same old, same old.

But unfortunately, a lot of Muslims sort of want the blood in the water, sharks in the water type situation.

And we'll see. We'll see. But anyway, I think it'll be sort of a mixture of,

I don't know the order yet, but Bashir Vania and this Yusuf Buxin fellow and then

Yusuf Ismail, those will be the first part of the debate and then debate series.

And then Shabir will be at the end. And so we definitely,

I still want to get to, and let me look here. I've still got a fair amount left just in this opening statement from Yusuf Ismail that I really want to try to get to.

So we've got about 36 minutes, I think, left in the program. And so we'll be able to get through a portion of that.

Unfortunately, I can't show you all what this looks like. I would probably be accused of trying to sell copies of Audio Notetaker.

But again, for anybody, if you're going back to school and stuff like that, look up Audio Notetaker.

I wish I had had this when I was in school. I really, really do. It is so incredibly useful.

But anyhow, you'll see how easy it is for me to just start and stop stuff and go through it here. All right, let's get back to Yusuf Ismail.

Um, I honestly don't remember where we are, but I'll figure it out as soon as I press this button.

What does it signify? It signifies that certain aspects or certain verses, certain manuscripts are, there's some kind of unanimity across the board.

Some of the verses are sound. B signifies there might be a certain doubt. C, there might not be an entirely correct understanding of this.

D, a bit spurious, weak, not authentic, not authoritative, and so they won't use it.

Okay, we're talking here. Get back into the context here. We're talking here. And by the way,

I appreciate someone on Twitter linked me to a translation of the Pope's thing by Google.

Of course, it's just a Google Translate, but it's English anyways. I'd like the official version because I need to know where we really what the words are saying.

But anyways, I appreciate that. Thank you, TNL Planet, for that. This is talking about the

UBS fourth edition, the United Bible Society's text, as I've mentioned before.

In fact, I had a great time yesterday, by the way, with a whole group of pastors and a minister's fraternal on exegetical, expositional preaching at FBC Lyndale.

It was really encouraging to meet with these men and to encourage them in doing exegetical, expositional preaching of the text itself.

And what I talked about was really interesting. And in fact, I found it more interesting than I thought it was going to be.

And I was the one speaking because what I addressed was the intersection of textual criticism and canonicity.

And so, for example, I talked about Luke 23, 34. Father, forgive them if they know not what they do. Romans 5, 1, the long writing of Mark, the

Prick of Adultery. How do we handle these variants in the context of preaching the

Word of God and bringing our people along to a position of maturity so they can understand the history of the text of the

New Testament? And they seemed to really enjoy it, and I really enjoyed it. It may be something

I should actually plan to do on the program sometime, to sort of repeat that information, because I did find it to be rather useful.

Anyway, he's talking about the fact that the United Bible Society's text, the

UBS -4th currently, is primarily designed to be used by people who are translating the

New Testament into other languages, you know, Wycliffe and people like that. So there's only a small number, relatively small number.

I forget how many. I think it's around 1 ,400. I had the number at one point. I'll have to look it back up again.

I think it's around 1 ,400 variants that are noted in the

UBS text, over against over 10 ,000 that are noted in the

Nestle -Allen text. The UBS text gives more information per variant than the

Nestle -Allen does, but the Nestle -Allen gives a much wider example, a much wider database from which to draw.

And in the UBS text, the committee decided, and I sometimes wish they hadn't bothered with this, but they decided to assign a rating that primarily expressed the unanimity and viewpoint of the selection committee itself.

Now, what a lot of, I think, Yusuf Ismail's listeners don't understand is that no matter whether it's an

A, a B, a C, or a D, the other readings that were not included in the text are found in the note.

It's not like something has been expunged. It's not like we don't know what the other readings were. As long as you have that information and you've learned to read the apparatus, and remember, when was that?

2010 -ish that we did the thing where we went through how to read the apparatus and we gave examples, and I think we did both

UBS -4 and Nestle -Allen, if I recall correctly. It's still on the blog somewhere. If you look up apparatus or something like that, it'll probably come up on the blog.

But if you've learned to read the sigla and to read the apparatus, you can determine for yourself what sources have what reading, et cetera, et cetera, and things like that.

And so these letters are not meant to say, well, this verse has this amount of authority.

It's just simply a reflection of the fact that the committee is expressing its understanding of their unanimity as to the choice of the main reading in the text.

That's what it's about. And I've heard a lot of Islamic apologists sort of camp on this as if it somehow is an indication of some type of overall problem with the text of the

New Testament or something like that. But what they do is that they develop an eclectic edition of the

New Testament using existing manuscripts. Metzger, for example, and he's a conservative scholar, in his book,

The Text for the New Testament and its Development, he says, lest, however, the wrong impression be conveyed from the statistics given above regarding the total number of Greek manuscripts, it should be pointed out that most of the papyri are relatively fragmentary, and that only about 50 contain the entire

New Testament. Now, what does that tell you from a conservative scholar such as Metzger? Well, I would be very interested in understanding what

Yusuf Ismail thinks it tells you from a conservative scholar like Metzger. What do you think he's trying to communicate?

And see, this is what I would challenge Yusuf to do, is don't just throw this stuff out because you're throwing this stuff out to people who, you have to admit, are completely ignorant of what this information could mean.

So if you just throw it out, you're sort of inviting them to put the worst possible construction out of ignorance and not to come to a proper conclusion.

What does that mean? I mean, it's pretty obvious from a historical standpoint that papyri manuscripts from the first century are going to be significantly fewer in number than vellum manuscripts from the 12th century.

There's just that little millennium thing between the two, that's all. I mean, it's just a given that that's going to be the case.

So what does it mean? And again, I think it's a little bit unfair not to point out that the time frame between the original writing of the

Quran, its original compilation, even if you just sort of take the Uthmanic revision as a given, as recorded in the

Hadith literature, the time frame between that and the codification of that text in printing is significantly shorter than the time frame between the writing in the

New Testament and the invention of printing. Which, while not absolutely freezing a text in time, certainly stabilizes a text in time because the number of copies that can be made, so on and so forth.

Much different thing here. And unfortunately, I think many people in the audience are probably trying to compare the two on a one -to -one basis, not recognizing that that is not an appropriate path to follow.

So I would keep all that in mind. If you look at the 5 ,847 Greek manuscripts, no two, apart from the tiniest fragments, are identical.

Of course not. No two handwritten manuscripts of the Quran are identical. No two handwritten manuscripts of anything are going to be identical because they're handwritten.

I mean, I suppose you could hope for an identical reading for a single sheet or something like that.

And again, the Quran only 56 % the length of the New Testament, much shorter. But still, that is the reality of all handwritten manuscripts that come to us from antiquity.

All of them, doesn't matter what it is, whether it's religious, non -religious, they're never going to be identical until 1949, the invention of the photocopier, even in printing.

Certainly, the sheets printed from one setting of type will be identical, but the same book could be printed in two different cities in the days of Gutenberg and have differences between them because the type setting is done by human beings.

As long as human beings are human beings, human beings are going to make mistakes.

And so, again, just throwing that out without contextualizing it is not an argument.

It may be a factual statement, but outside of a context, it's not a meaningful statement.

Until the 8th century, there is not one Greek manuscript that contains the books of the New Testament in the present order that we have them.

Why is that relevant? Because there's no claim on the

New Testament's part that the order of the books is inspired at all. For example,

P46. P46 is the earliest collection of Paul's writings, and guess what book comes after Romans?

Hebrews. Is that relevant? It's relevant to the fact that it's a testimony that someone at the beginning of the 2nd century thought that Paul wrote

Hebrews. But it's not relevant to inspiration or anything else. The order of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is not inspired.

You could take the New Testament books and completely rearrange the order they're in, and it would have absolutely, positively, not the slightest impact upon the inspiration of those texts, because they were written by multiple authors at multiple times to multiple locations.

And so, that's irrelevant. And I would argue you could throw the surahs of the

Quran. In fact, over and over again, I over and over again emphasize to audiences that they should not read the

Quran from beginning to end. That they should read it in chronological order.

At least, that will help them to try to follow the background of some of the texts in the life of Muhammad.

Now, I understand a Muslim would say, no, no, no, the way that it's constructed comes from Allah.

Now, I don't know where you get that. The Quran doesn't say that. There may be something in the

Hadith I've missed, didn't realize the significance of it, skipped over it or something,

I don't know. But I don't think Muhammad said anything about the order of the Quran.

And obviously, from the Islamic perspective, given the nature of the Quran, the chronological order is irrelevant.

It's all just words of God. You don't need to understand what's going on in Muhammad's life to understand it. But I simply suggest to you that I think we all recognize that doesn't work.

That you do need to know what the background is to be able to make sense of large portions of it. You've got the Uspensky Gospels, the first dated

New Testament in about 835. Of the 5 ,847 manuscripts, 28, 11 of these manuscripts are in the minuscule type of handwriting.

That writing dates from the 9th century onwards. 2 ,279 lectionaries, also a type of writing.

That's only about... No, it's not a type of writing. I think Yusuf is confused there.

The lectionary is a form of the text that breaks it into readings for use in liturgical service.

And so it's not like it's some different kind of writing. He had just... And maybe he's just speaking too quickly, but since he just differentiated between unseal and minuscule, and the minuscule is developed 8th, 9th century, it very quickly banishes the unseal form because it's much easier to read and to copy.

That's what leads me to think that he's saying that the lectionary form is yet another form of writing, which it really is not.

It's another form of manuscript in the sense of the function of the manuscript, but it's not another form of writing as in unseal versus minuscule.

Thirty lectionaries date from before the 9th century, meaning the majority date after the 9th century, 900 years after Jesus.

And that's something similar to what I'd suggest. Bart Ehrman, for example, the same scholar that I quoted, he states that when one compares one manuscript to another, no two copies agree in their wording.

And this is his quotation. He says, there's been something that 200 ,000 and 300 ,000 variations amongst all the manuscripts, which is more variations in the

New Testament itself. Now, I present that all the time. I present it at the beginning of my

New Testament Reliability presentation, and then I contextualize it so people can understand what that means, because I don't know if I've forgotten if the next breath from Yusuf Ismail will be to then continue

Bart Ehrman's statement, because Bart Ehrman will then, as any textual critical scholar has to say, will point out that the vast majority, and I don't know that he would go with as large a majority as I would, but the vast majority of these variants are utterly irrelevant.

And he also would agree with me that to interpret the words of, that's more variants than there are words in the

New Testament. There's 138 ,162 words in Nesha 'alon 27th. I need to memorize the new number Nesha 'alon 28th, because it's actually a little bit higher.

I think it's around 200 instead of 162. Anyways, that communicates to many people the idea, and it's a false idea, that there are as many as three variants per word in the

New Testament. That's not the case. That's not the case. The vast majority of these variations could not be explained outside of the

Greek language. In other words, they do not translate, they do not impact meaning, they're not translatable.

Whether you have a movable new or not, word order issues that do not come across in other languages, things like that.

When people just throw out the variant number without contextualizing it, I'll be perfectly honest with you, that really bothers me and it almost makes me go to the point of accusing that person of dishonesty or ignorance, one of the two.

Because this is such an obvious thing, and yet I have to point it out to people.

If you only have one copy of a book, one copy of an ancient work, how many textual variants will you have?

None. You'll have no textual variants if you only have one copy. Now, a lot of Christians, and evidently, seemingly a lot of Muslims, wish that's all you had, just one.

So there's no question about it. But think with me for a moment. Which is better to have of a work of antiquity?

5 ,700 manuscripts or one? Well, some people would say one.

Okay, what's the problem with that? The problem with that is that one author has to have gotten it absolutely right.

Because if he messed anything up, there's no way of finding out. There's no way of knowing.

The more manuscripts you have for a work of antiquity, the greater your capacity to have trust that you know what the original said.

And this is going to be one of the key issues in my debate with Yusuf. And I'm hoping Yusuf is listening. I think that he is.

Maybe not live, but I'm catching the podcast. There's a little bit of a time difference between us. But we are going to be debating which is the better methodology of transmission.

A controlled transmission, such as the Quran has because of the ethmonic revision, or the free transmission of the text that we find in the

New Testament. My argument is it is the free. And Bart Ehrman would agree with me on that point.

I know he would. He would loathe to do so, but I am very certain that he would agree that having, let's say, well, the example

I always use is 1 John 3, 1. I mentioned it before. Whether Kai Esselman is there. It's an example of Homo Eteliton.

Whether we have, if we have 500 manuscripts of the book of 1

John, it is far better to have 500 manuscripts of 1

John than only one manuscript of 1 John, where that error takes place. Because if that error took place there, we have nothing to compare it to.

We would never be able to recognize that a scribe had engaged in the error of Homo Eteliton.

Similar endings. He had written Clay Thoman. His eye goes back to what he's copying. He sees the end of Kai Esselman.

He sees Mu Epsilon Nu. He starts there. He inadvertently deletes a phrase,

Kai Esselman, and we are. An affirmation of the fact that we are adopted as children of God. He wasn't trying to change anything.

It's just the kind of mistake that people make. And having 500 copies of 1

John from different places at different times allows us to recognize that.

Now, it also creates textual variance. But you see, it actually doesn't create the textual variance.

It just reveals them. If you only have one copy, you've still got a textual variant. You've still got a textual variant.

You just don't know you've got a textual variant. You don't know how many of them you've got. That's going to be a challenge.

And I accept the challenge. And one of the great, wonderful things about being a

Reformed Christian is I can simply pray that God will allow me to do my best, to speak with clarity, to lay it out there, and then you know what?

I can leave it up to Him. And if I see people that just don't, they don't want to get it, they don't want to hear, nothing

I can do about that. Nothing I can do about that. Got to leave it in God's hands, and He will take care of the issue.

So there you go. There's some comments on that. That was the first New Testament ever compiled by a chap called

Desiderius Erasmus, issued at Basel in 1516. The first time that you had the complete Greek New Testament.

And what he did was that he used complete printed Greek New Testament, used the corrupted existing manuscripts after the 9th century or whatever existed to compile the

New Testament. Uh, what? Corrupted after the 9th, what?

He used Byzantine manuscripts. He had about a half dozen. He had one as early as the 10th century, but didn't trust it.

That first edition, as he himself said, was precipitated rather than edited. He made changes over the next couple of editions.

Interestingly enough, the Comma Iohannium was not a part of that first edition. I wonder if Yusuf is aware of that. The Comma Iohannium was not in the first two editions of Erasmus.

It was not inserted until the third edition of Erasmus, which one, unfortunately, was the most popular of his editions, and then is continued on in the other editions that become the basis of the

Texas Receptus. But yes, Erasmus did have a very limited textual platform to draw from.

So limited that when he got to the Book of Revelation, he didn't have any manuscripts at all. And he had to borrow a commentary on the

Book of Revelation from his friend Johannes Reikland, who himself is a very interesting fellow.

And of course, that led to a number of very interesting readings in the Book of Revelation, where one of his scribes made errors extracting the

Greek text out of the commentary text. And then, of course, the famous story of the fact that his manuscript of that commentary, the last few pages had fallen off.

So he had to reconstruct the last six verses of the last chapter of Revelation from the

Latin Vulgate, which resulted in readings that no one's ever seen in a Greek manuscript before, but continue to be in the

Texas Receptus today, and are dutifully defended by TR -only folks and King James Olympus to this very day, who likewise detest the

Latin Vulgate, except for when the Latin Vulgate becomes the source of their TR. That's a whole other debate. Several readings have been found, which have never been found in the existing manuscript.

What does it tell you? It tells you the chap was editing. Theodore Biza. It tells you the chap was editing.

No, it doesn't. It tells you that the chap, which would be

Erasmus, had to make editorial decisions when the manuscripts he had differed from one another.

It tells you that he was, and I'm not sure if Yusuf is aware of this, but that first edition was a diaglon.

The Novum Instrumentum was a diaglon, and to be honest with you, Erasmus sort of did the

Greek as a sort of a side thing. Erasmus was most focused initially, a lot of people are not aware of this, or he was most focused initially upon his own fresh

Latin translation, and assumed he'd get most of the heat for daring to mess with the

Latin Vulgate, and he did, in fact. But attention turned eventually primarily to the

Greek, because of the impact that it was having. So just to simply say, oh, he was editing.

Well, what do you mean by that? Do you mean he was doing textual criticism because they had variations and manuscripts in front of him?

Yes. Does it mean that he was making decisions concerning when to follow the

Vulgate? Because he did, in Acts, he inserted some sections. Following the

Vulgate, rather than following even the Greek manuscripts that he had. Okay. But are your hearers,

Yusuf, going to understand your phrase, editing, as meaning that? Or that he's sitting there going, ah,

I think I'll change this, ah, I think I'll change that. Erasmus was not that cavalier in his behavior.

Theodore Biza, for example, used the corrupt Byzantine text type manuscripts and published nine editions of the

Greek New Testament before 1565 and 1604. And that, in fact, formed the basis of the King James Version.

Yeah. The seven editions, the seven printed editions that were utilized with the

King James translators did include Biza's 1598, the 1550

Stephanos, and the five editions of Erasmus. And are they all Byzantine? Yep.

They're all related to one another. I mean, it's not like Biza came up with a whole new text. The number of variations between the five editions of Erasmus, Stephanos, and Biza are relatively small.

They're interesting. They are interesting to note. And the King James translators had to make decisions about them.

Sometimes I don't even think they were aware of it, to be pretty honest with you. There really wasn't any sustained effort on the part of the

King James translators to engage in a textual critical study. They weren't using manuscripts.

They were using printed editions of the Greek New Testament. They were focused upon producing a translation, not revisiting all the textual issues that we would be most concerned about today.

So again, to say the corrupted Byzantine type, if what you mean by that is that most scholars see the

Byzantine text type as a later text type and not representative of the primitive text as well as the

Alexandrian, that's true. That's true. But I would argue and would be glad to demonstrate,

Yusuf, that if you apply the same standards of textual critical analysis and if you apply the same hermeneutical methodology of interpretation to the most

Byzantine manuscript and the most Alexandrian manuscript, you will not come up with a different doctrine of teaching.

You won't. I know my King James -only friends are jumping up and down and throwing things at their computer right now, but you will not.

They are not teaching a different gospel or a different message. So they're using manuscripts dating later, and based on all these fragments, they're compiling what we have in eclectic edition of the

New Testament. I think Yusuf really thinks that this is a devastating argument, but it's only devastating to someone who has no earthly idea what he's talking about.

It's not in any way, shape, or form devastating to those of us who work with the Greek New Testament regularly.

These are things that we all know, and it's only by placing them in a context that is unfriendly to them can you come up with any type of meaningful application at all.

These are some of the basic Greek texts in the Christian world, the major anciels, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, and Sinaiticus.

Sinaiticus, which is the oldest, I'd urge you to check www .codexsinaiticus .co .za for the first time.

That's going to be released to the public. And in the Sinaiticus, I don't have time to amplify it further, which is the oldest, dating to the fourth century, 400 years after Jesus.

What you'd find there is books contained which don't appear. Now, let me just stop right there.

That's not 400 years after Jesus. When you say fourth century, that's misleading.

400 years after Jesus would be AD 430. Sinaiticus is dated to about 325 to 350.

There's almost 100 years off in his calculations there. So it's much closer than he seemingly indicated by that.

A lot of people struggle with the idea of first century, second century, third century, fourth century, so on and so forth. Not recognizing the fourth century is the 300s, because the first century is the zeros.

And so a lot of us have fallen into that particular trap, as he just did there.

Now, is it true that Codex Sinaiticus contains books other than what we have in the canon of the Old and New Testament?

Yes, it does. Does anyone ever bother to try to prove that this indicated that the authors of Codex Sinaiticus were canonically challenged?

No, they don't bother to go there for some reason. Remember, Codex Sinaiticus is a very large volume.

It would have been very expensive to produce. And as such, an individual who had that kind of money, and again, one of the possibilities that exists out there, is that Codex Sinaiticus is one of those copies that was produced with imperial monies, because it is mentioned that the

Council of Nicaea, Constantine gave money to the church for the production of biblical manuscripts. He didn't tell them what to produce.

He just gave them money to produce them, because the Roman state had been destroying, only 12 years earlier, hundreds, and in fact thousands, of biblical manuscripts.

And so sort of a mea culpa thing on the part of the Roman emperor at that particular point.

But if you were going to spend a lot of money to have a huge volume made, there would be people who would say, well,

I want the Old New Testament, and I'd also like some of my favorite books of religion, because I want them all in one place, and I want them all to be done very, very well.

Now, today we wouldn't do that, but I would like to suggest that there is a modern parallel to this.

I have a Lagos library. I have many Bibles in my

Lagos library. I have Greek Bibles, and Latin Bibles, and Aramaic Bibles, and all sorts of stuff.

But I have all sorts of other books in my library, too. That doesn't mean I think they're canonical. Just because they're all sitting on the same hard drive, all in the same program, it's a

Bible study program. But that doesn't mean that I believe that they're canonical.

And someone back then could say, I want to have... This is going to be my library. This is going to be my portable library.

So let's put everything in there that I want. And I really enjoy reading the Shepherd of Hermas. It was very popular amongst

Christians. So I want the Shepherd of Hermas in there as well. And the jumped to assumption is, ah, see, see?

Canon problems. But I've yet to have anyone go, and here's my evidence that that proves that this person at this time...

You know, if this was a manuscript from maybe the second century, that might have a little more oomph to it.

But really, by the fourth century, there was much more clarity on these subjects.

And the likelihood of inclusion of the Shepherd of Hermas, or the Epistle of Barnabas, or anything like that, reflecting a canonical decision, not as much.

In the existing New Testament, for example, we've got here the

Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, different portions considered part of biblical canon by the editors of the

Codex, but they were not considered later on. Now, notice what he said. He just jumped to the assumption.

That means they're considered part of the biblical... Didn't prove it. I challenge you to prove it. What's your evidence?

Because remember, Sinaiticus has numerous scribes that are involved with it.

In fact, if you go to the very website he mentioned, CodexSinaiticus .org, and I was checking this out.

I was... Recently, I've been looking really closely at a particular phrase, sentence, actually, that's found in John chapter 18, because it's contained in P52, manuscript

P52. The little fragment. And it's just has captured my heart.

What Jesus said to Pilate. I haven't tried to memorize it, and I don't have it here in front of me.

I think it's pas ha 'on. I think ek is there.

Ek teis aleithaios. So, everyone who is of the truth.

Akuai, is it teis mufonais, or mu teis fonais? I'll look.

It's Jesus' words. Everyone who is from or according to the truth, hears my voice.

Now, I don't have time to even begin to expand upon that. If you, like me, are just overwhelmed with the artistry of the

Gospel of John, especially as he talks about hearing, and the voice, and being of the truth, and of God, and it's just awesome.

And to me, it's just so awesome that the earliest fragment we have has that line in it. But I was looking at Sinaiticus.

That particular page is fairly badly faded. I really had to zoom in on it to read it. It's a fantastic website, by the way.

But one of the neat things is, they have indicated which of the scribes wrote that particular section.

And so, you have multiple scribes working on this same manuscript. So, are you saying that all of them held the canonical status of these books?

How do you prove that? Have you even tried to prove that? Is this just an assumption on your part? That would be one of the things that I would try to bring up and to challenge

Yusuf Ismail at that point. Well, we're pretty much out of time on the program today. We have covered a bunch of stuff.

And, yeah, Theophilus just put that in channel. I think that's, yeah, mutes phones. That was close. I hadn't tried to memorize it, but I got fairly close to it.

Anyways, we've covered a bunch of stuff today. Today has been our first live webcam eye of Sauron experience.

We're going to have to start putting some serious thought into what's in the background. And I'm thinking lava lamp.

I really am. I'm thinking mega lava lamp, not one of the little ones. I'm thinking a beautiful one back there.

Say one that stands on the floor. That would be really cool. Except that would be really hot, too.

Lava is hot. That, yeah, yeah, that is because that's nice and cool. So I'm going to have to.

You know what? We need one of those Tesla balls. That's what we need. One of the one of the, except that'll probably interfere with the microphone.

So who knows? Anyways, thanks for watching and listening.

The dividing line today. Home next week. So should be fairly regular.

And the next week after that should be fairly regular, even though that's right as I'm preparing to go. So please, your prayers for preparation and especially for the time.

Greatly appreciated coming up in South Africa. Your support as well. Very much needed. Thanks for listening to the dividing line today.

God bless. The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

World Wide Web at AOMIN .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.